Too late, I bit off the word. Stoker arched an imperious brow, every bit as much an aristocrat as Tiberius in that moment. “Now, Veronica, surely you did not resort to such a low and underhanded stratagem as stealing the private property of a gentleman?”
Any general worth his salt knows that the high ground is always preferable, but when one finds oneself in a morass, the best tactic is to ride straight ahead at the enemy in the hopes one may break his courage.
“I did what was necessary in order to solve this case,” I told him loftily. “There are sketches ofthosebones,” I said, pointing for emphasis, “in Lorenzo’s notebook. He was upset they had been stolen from the fossil. Those same bones have been resting uponthatmantelpiece,” I said, pointing again, “for twenty years. They might have been taken by Timothy Gresham, but it was not he who held forth on the subject of Mary Anning at dinner the first night. It was Elspeth. She stole the bones and she murdered Lorenzo d’Ambrogio over a fossil.”
A gentle cough came from the doorway. “I did not, in point of fact, kill Lorenzo,” Elspeth said as she entered with a bowl of sugar. She seated herself behind the tea table and poured out a cup for me. “You needn’t fear it is poisoned, dear. Stoker and I have been drinking from that pot.” She paused, and her expression, usually so sedately sour, looked almost amused. Her eyes eventwinkledas she handed me the cup. “But do not sweeten it if you fear the sugar. I did just bring it in from another room.”
Stoker reached out and, with great deliberation, added two large lumps to his cup. She did the same, and they both stirred and sipped. I drank a little of my tea to be polite, and she gave a satisfied nod. “Well then. If you were truly persuaded I was a murderess, you would not have taken refreshment from my table. I must say, I know I ought to be thoroughly offended, but it is rather exciting to be suspected of such a thing! I have been so dull for so long, it is gratifying to know someone thinks I am capable of more than just putting up the jam and calling upon the poor and needy.”
“I am certain the poor and needy appreciate your efforts,” Stoker said kindly.
She waved a hand. “No doubt. But one can only dispense so much beef tea and knit so many socks before half a lifetime is gone and there is nothing to show for it.” Her mouth lapsed into its usual sullen lines for a moment. “I thought it would all be quite different, you know.Iwas different. At twenty, I wanted nothing more than to study fossils, to excavate, to make a name for myself like Mary Anning. I used to roam the cliffs for hours on end, digging, always digging. I ruined my complexion and my hands, according to my mother, and no gentleman would ever want such a freckled, windblown creature for a wife. But I did not care. I knew what I wanted, more than anything in the world. I would find the greatest fossil ever discovered. It would be named for me, and when I had dug it out of the earth, I would sell it to the highest bidder, some grand museum or person of royalty who would pay a prince’s ransom to own it. And I would go to London to see it delivered and men of science would shake my hand. I would give lectures about how I had found it, me, Miss Elspeth Gresham of Dearsley.” Her eyes had taken on a faraway look as she spoke, but she gathered herself with a shake. “Well, young people can be very stupid, and I was very young. Such a silly dream, but it was mine. Until Lorenzo d’Ambrogio came.” Her mouth twisted and she took a deep draught of her tea.
“And he discovered your fossil,” Stoker said gently.
“The first half hour he looked!” Her tone was frankly exasperated. “I had been digging for years,years,and he managed it in an afternoon. I burned with it, but oh, how I loved that fossil! I had found the first hint of it, you see. The month before, some of the cliff had come away and brought a bit of bone. It was not much, hardly more than a splinter, but I knew something great was locked in those cliffs. I thought of it as my fossil, even though Lorenzo found the rest of it. I found it first,first,mind you.”
She paused and gave a sharp nod as if to stake her claim. “But that wasn’t good enough for Lord Templeton-Vane. I asked him for men to help dig it out, I was that convinced it lay just out of reach. One good effort would have exposed it for all to see. But the cliffs were precarious and he was worried he might lose a good farmhand or two if we pressed on. So he roped off the cliffs and forbade anyone from going near. I had hopes of persuading him, but he was immovable, the old devil.” She paused and looked at Stoker. “Begging your pardon, I know he was your father.”
Stoker shrugged. “I assure you, I have called him worse and often to his face.”
She picked up the thread of her tale. “Some weeks later, Tiberius and his friends arrived. They did as they were told so long as the old lord was about, but one day he had to go out on the farms, and Tiberius thought it would be a great lark to do a spot of digging and see what they could turn up. And that Lorenzo finds my beautiful beast! They were carrying him around on their shoulders like a conquering hero—for findingmyfossil.”
“And presumably Lord Templeton-Vane heard of it when he returned home and refused them access to the cliffs again?” I ventured.
She nodded. “He roared and fussed and stormed about at being disobeyed. Lorenzo was most apologetic, the perfect gentleman,” she added sourly. “It never occurred to him to apologise tome. He’d never have found the beast if it had not been for my excavations. LordTempleton-Vane wanted to make amends for keeping him away until the cliffs could be shored up, so he hosted a dance. We were invited, you know. Timothy and I. And I had to sit there whilst they toasted him, Lorenzo d’Ambrogio, finder of lost wonders.”
She paused, her lips working furiously. “It was the greatest thing I ever found, and it wasn’t even mine. Timothy knew I’d been the first to discover a bit of it, but he wouldn’t say boo to a goose, not if that goose were surnamed Templeton-Vane! ‘Mustn’t be churlish,’ that’s all he said to me. And the rest of them, pouring out rivers of champagne. I fairly burned to tell them what I thought of it all. But I looked around that ballroom, at the gathering of men, so sure of themselves, so privileged. And what could I possibly say against that? For all my airs, I was a country doctor’s daughter. I knew not to speak crossways to my ‘betters.’ So I swallowed my pride with my champagne and I went home and vowed never to speak of it again. And I gave up fossil hunting forever.”
She had flared with indignation during her little speech, but the fight seemed suddenly to go out of her. She picked the cat up onto her lap and stroked it, putting her face against its fur. It purred, low and softly, as if to give consolation to its mistress. When she had collected herself, she resumed her tale.
“The very next night the storms came. Everyone stayed inside, shutters battened. We knew it was going to be a bad one, we did. And I wet my pillow with tears, thinking of my beautiful fossil. I knew the cliffs wouldn’t hold under that kind of weather. I’d been clambering around them the whole of my life. I knew them like the back of my own hands.” She held up her hands, surveying the lines and spots of age. “I never did have a lady’s hands. My mother used to bathe them in milk and send me to bed wearing gloves, but I was happiest with the good Devon soil beneath my nails. I was limber as a limpet in those days. I could outclimb any man. But I would never have dared those cliffs in that storm. It was a fool’s errand. I knew my fossil would be lost, and I grieved for that. But I will admit Ilaughed myself silly thinking that Lorenzo d’Ambrogio would get his comeuppance whenhisgreat find was washed into the sea.”
Catching my look of interest, she smiled. “I don’t mean his death, Veronica. I mean the sheer fit of pique he would suffer at claiming such a discovery and having Nature herself snatch it back. She was always on my side, Mother Nature. I woke up the next morning, and it was as if the breath of God had blown across the land. Apple trees in the orchard uprooted, tiles from the roofs half a league away. Even the cows were wandering about looking as if they’d just been to Paris and back. And then the news came that Lorenzo d’Ambrogio was missing. We set out, all of us—yes, even me—to find him. I knew at once where he’d gone because I’d wanted to go so badly myself. No one who loved that fossil could have rested easily that night. But where I valued my own life more than the bones, Lorenzo hadn’t any such qualms. I was the one who found him, lying at the base of the cliff where it had crumbled away into the sea. He had landed upon stones, great boulders, and you would have thought he’d have been ugly, but he wasn’t. He looked like Icarus, dashed from the heavens.”
She paused and rubbed her face into the cat’s fur again. When she looked up, her eyes were bright with unshed tears. “You wouldn’t think it would upset me all this time later, but to see such beauty taken in its prime. Oh yes, he was beautiful. I don’t imagine you would have realised it at the time, Stoker,” she said with an arch smile, “but he was. Even as I hated him, I could see he was the loveliest man I’d ever meet. The sort of otherworldly beauty you read about in fairy tales, the beauty of enchanted princes, the beauty that is cursed for it never brings happiness. Ganymede, cupbearer to the gods.” Into the solemn silence that followed, the spaniel broke wind again.
“Did you know that Beatrice Salviati was his sister?” I asked.
She opened her mouth, then closed it again, shaking her head. “No. She seemed familiar somehow, but not in any way I could place. Ican see it now. She had his grace, a way of holding herself. Poise, I suppose you’d call it. Perhaps something about the nose. Poor lady.”
I flicked a glance to Stoker and he stirred himself, putting his cup aside and sitting forward to address Elspeth. “Beatrice believed that Lorenzo’s death was not accidental.”
Elspeth shifted, startling the cat, who leapt from her lap and straight onto the top of a bookshelf. Elspeth had gone quite pale and she took a hasty sip of her tea. The cup clattered a little in the saucer as she put it down.
“That is a dreadful thing to contemplate,” she said at last.
“But possible,” Stoker pressed gently.
She thought a moment, then nodded, her expression grave. “Yes. It would take someone very brave or very foolish, but yes. He might have been... pushed.”
Stoker and I said nothing, and she went on. “I realise that puts me squarely under suspicion. I had motive, I suppose, if I were a thoroughly irrational creature acting solely out of jealousy over the fossil. And I was good with heights and a skilled climber, all of which I have just admitted to you—very foolish if I did in fact kill him. I’ve also made no secret of my antipathy towards him, which is again rather shortsighted if I shoved him over the cliff. Wouldn’t a clever murderess have pretended to like him, claimed to be terrible with heights, feigned a complete disinterest in fossils? Wouldn’t a clever murderess have at least hid the bones from sight?” she demanded, pointing to the little group of bones.
“Indeed,” said Stoker amiably. “Of course averyclever murderess would have done exactly the opposite and pointed it all out to us as you have just done. A double bluff.”
She smiled in spite of herself. “I am not that clever, Stoker. I am petty. I bear grudges and I nurture resentments. But I am no murderess. I did not push Lorenzo over that cliff. I did not kill Beatrice. You must look further afield for your villain.”
CHAPTER
